ORES.  Whoever loves his father.

MEN.  And whoever reveres his mother.

ORES. —­Is happy.

MEN.  Not thou at least.

ORES.  For wicked women please me not.

MEN.  Take away the sword from my daughter.

ORES.  Thou art false in thy expectations.

MEN.  But wilt thou kill my daughter?

ORES.  Thou art no longer false.

MEN.  Alas me! what shall I do?

ORES.  Go to the Argives, and persuade them.

MEN.  With what persuasion?

ORES.  Beseech the city that we may not die.[41a]

MEN.  Otherwise ye will slay my daughter?

ORES.  The thing is so.

MEN.  O wretched Helen!—­

ORES.  And am I not wretched?

MEN.  I brought thee hither from the Trojans to be a victim.

ORES.  For would this were so!

MEN.  Having endured ten thousand toils.

ORES.  Except on my account.

MEN.  I have met with dreadful treatment.

ORES.  For then, when thou oughtest, thou wert of no assistance.

MEN.  Thou hast me.

ORES.  Thou at least hast caught thyself.  But, ho there! set fire to the palace, Electra, from beneath:  and thou, Pylades, the most true of my friends, light up these battlements of the walls.

MEN.  O land of the Danai, and inhabitants of warlike Argos, will ye not, ho there! come in arms to my succor?  For this man here, having perpetrated the shocking murder of his mother, brings destruction on your whole city, that he may live.

APOLLO.

Menelaus, cease from thy irritated state of mind; I Phoebus the son of Latona, in thy presence, am addressing thee.  Thou too, Orestes, who standest over that damsel with thy sword drawn, that thou mayest know what commands I bring with me.  Helen indeed, whom thou minded to destroy, working Menelaus to anger, didst fail of thy purpose, she is here, whom ye see wrapt in the bosom of the sky, preserved, and not slain by thy hands.  Her I preserved, and snatched from thy sword, commanded by my father Jove.  For being the daughter of Jove, it is right that she should live immortal.  And she shall have her seat by Castor and Pollux in the bosom of the sky, the guardian of mariners.  But take to thyself another bride, and lead her home, since for the beauty of this woman the Gods brought together the Greeks and Trojans, and caused deaths, that they might draw from off the earth the pride of mortals, who had become an infinite multitude.  Thus is it with regard to Helen; but thee, on the other hand, Orestes, it behooveth, having passed beyond the boundaries of this land, to inhabit the Parrhasian plain during the revolution of a year, and it shall be called by a name after thy flight, so that the Azanes and Arcadians shall call it Oresteum:  and thence having departed to the city of the Athenians, undergo the charge of shedding thy mother’s